“No,” Evelayn immediately responded. “I got you in this mess and I’m not leaving you behind.” She’d already mostly recovered from tearing the hole in the wards; only a lingering shakiness in her hands remained. She knelt beside the general and gently probed at his leg. There was a large lump where he’d snapped the long thighbone, and when she pressed she could feel that it had started to fuse back together off-center.
“What can we do?” She glanced up at Tanvir, who knelt beside her.
“We’re going to have to re-break the bone and set it so it heals correctly,” he replied darkly.
Kel grimaced but didn’t argue. “Do what you must.”
“How do we do that?” Evelayn glanced up at the inky sky above them. The first few stars were already blinking in the black expanse, and there was a slight chill to the air wafting toward them from Dorjhalon.
“If you hold him, I will do it. I’ve had to do it before on the battlefield.”
Evelayn nodded and moved to Kel’s torso, trying not to think about why he’d had to do this before—or on whom.
“Hold his arms down, don’t let him thrash.”
“My leg is broken, not my ears, Lord Tanvir. And I’m perfectly capable of holding still on my own,” Kel finally spoke up, but his voice was strained and the air was rank with the scent of his pain and fear.
“How about if I just hold your hands,” Evelayn offered, “and you can squeeze them if it hurts too much.”
“If you insist.” Kel sighed, but she caught the flash of relief across his face. She moved so that he could rest his head in her lap and lifted his arms so she could grip his hands.
“Ready when you are.” She nodded to Tanvir, who had been busy cutting off the leg of Kel’s pants and tearing the fabric into strips.
“I just need to find something to set it for the night, and we can get this over with.” He hurried over to the tree line and quickly returned with two long branches and set them beside Kel. “All right. This is going to hurt. Are you ready?”
Kel nodded, his hands flexing in Evelayn’s.
“Here we go,” Tanvir muttered under his breath. Then he grabbed Kel’s leg with both hands and yanked.
There was an audible snap. Kel’s back arched, and he squeezed Evelayn’s hands so tightly she was afraid he was going to break her bones. But he didn’t make a single noise, not even a groan. His forehead beaded with sweat as Tanvir worked, quiet and efficient. Evelayn kept her eyes on Kel’s face, rather than watching.
There was another snap and this time Kel’s head thrashed, his teeth baring, as though it was all he could do not to bellow in agony.
“Almost done,” Tanvir assured them.
Evelayn glanced up to see him placing the pieces of wood and quickly binding them with the strips of fabric to Kel’s now-straight leg.
“All finished,” Tanvir finally announced, rocking back on his haunches to survey his handiwork.
Kel sighed in relief, and his grip relaxed on Evelayn’s aching hands.
“We’d better rest here tonight. He shouldn’t move that leg until morning, when the bone has had a chance to fuse back together.” Tanvir stood up and brushed the dirt off his knees. “I’ll prepare camp.”
“I can help,” Evelayn offered, but he waved her off.
“Stay with him and rest. It will only take a moment. And I’ll take first watch.”
He turned and strode over to where they’d dropped their packs without another word, and Evelayn didn’t protest. Now that Kel’s leg was fixed and on its way to healing correctly, exhaustion washed over her once more—as well as the memory of all that she’d done. The silk, the promise, and tearing the hole in the wards.
Evelayn glanced across the border, contemplating what to do about the gap she’d created in their defenses, when she saw a flicker of movement in the depths of the forest. Fatigue gone in an instant, she narrowed her eyes, straining to see through the darkness. For a long moment, nothing moved. Evelayn hardly dared breathe. And then, with a mournful call, a bird took flight from the spot where she’d first noticed something.
Spooked, Evelayn slowly stood and stepped closer to the border. If that had been a Dark Draíolon, he or she could have walked right in to éadrolan and then gone back to alert the king as to the hole in the wards. She couldn’t leave her kingdom vulnerable like this—somehow, she had to fix what she’d done.
But she had the sinking feeling that fixing the hole was going to be much more difficult than making it.
“Eve—er, Your Majesty? Is everything all right?”
“I thought I saw something,” Evelayn responded to Tanvir without turning around. “It ended up being a bird, but what if it had been a Dark Draíolon? I can’t leave the hole like this. I have to try and repair what I did.”
“Do you know how?”
She simply said no, and then closed her eyes and stretched her hands out, once more searching for the infinitesimal layers of magic she’d felt before blasting through them. Tanvir didn’t speak again, and Evelayn tried to ignore the fact that he was probably watching her, waiting for something to happen, wondering how she was going to accomplish this when she’d admitted to not knowing how.
Long minutes passed while she concentrated, searching for the layers, but there was only the cool night air and a faint, pulsing ebb of power from the hole she’d torn in the wards. A cold finger of fear scraped down her spine. How big was the gap she’d created? What if she’d destroyed the wards completely?
Panic threatened to swoop in, but Evelayn forced herself to breathe through it, to try and hold it at bay and think. Perhaps, if she walked a little bit closer to Ristra where the priestesses created the wards, she would find the severed threads? Evelayn began to slowly tread the line of the border, with one hand still extended, reaching for something … anything.
“Evelayn, where are you—”
Tanvir’s question was silenced by Kel shushing him, but Evelayn ignored them both, suddenly freezing in place.
There. A flicker … no, a thread!
A wave of relief crashed over her when she took another couple of steps and the threads multiplied and grew until it felt exactly as the invisible wall had before she’d destroyed a section of it. The double layer was intact; she could feel the connection all the way back to Ristra.
“Oh, thank the Light,” she murmured. At least it wasn’t as bad as she’d feared for a few agonizing minutes. But she still didn’t know how to duplicate it and fill in the chasm. If only she’d had time to train with the priestesses, like all other royals did when they came into their full power. There’s no sense wishing for what can’t be, she scolded herself. Focus. You can do this. You have to do this.